


The Arrival

by Egon



Series: The Lies That Destroy Us [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Fontcest, Incest, M/M, Male Pregnancy, Mild Language, Monster Biology, Mpreg, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Original Character(s), Parasites, Sans gets dark, Sibling Incest, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Desires, Tragic Romance, Unhealthy Relationships, Unplanned Pregnancy, mention of non-con, mention of rape, monster pregnancy, skelepreg, sleep drunk, soul spark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Egon/pseuds/Egon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>#2: It is not my child.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this at a very late hour, and am conscious of potential edits that may need to occur in day-lit hours; it has been given a look-over by a very tired and very loyal reader, and judged suitably fit to post by their standards. Please enjoy this as it is.

For as long as he could remember, they were alone. There was a time before he could remember when he was certain that there were more. One. At least one more. But he could not remember. It was a sad and complicated understanding, being alone. He had never even considered this venue. There was always some dim hope that they had cousins across the river. Maybe he had operated from a bias that Sans was too lazy to pursue any form of intimate relationship. Maybe he hadn’t tried hard enough in his own way. 

He used to have dreams when he was younger of beautiful maidens professing their love after he rescued them from angry human villagers with fuzzed out faces. They would offer him their hearts, and he would refuse them. It was the gentle, knightly way, to never reciprocate, to never give way to one’s natural urges with those so very superior to himself… And yet, he knew if the dreams had given him peasant girls and villager boys, he would have refused them equally as firmly. The word ‘love’ was an abstract in his mind. He had certain… attachment to Sans, and that included tenderness and responsibility. Romantic affection and sexual desire meant nothing to him. Other people had it, and talked about it. All he had was the affection of something that was ‘there’ long enough to be a staple in his life. “Together”, and still “alone”. And funny…. so funny how he was suddenly understanding that “alone” was classified in the sense of romantic, sexual, paternal.

This night had opened his eyes. This new understanding was uncomfortable, and just thinking about thinking about it was uncomfortable in turn. He knew he would argue with himself about how one taste was sufficient for him. That wasn’t really true. The presence of sexual desire now nagged at him furiously. He had tasted the forbidden and it had flushed through his body and re-characterized him in different light. Physical act was coupled with mental state. Though he didn’t dare touch his heart with its child, he dreaded the next manual manipulation. Something that was a dull, mildly pleasant reward; a way to sleep better, if he wanted to sleep at all; a chore to take care of for whatever irritants it presented… now he’d feel “arousal”. Now, “arousal” would precede release. Now, and this was another certainty, he would think of Sans. Why Sans? Why not someone else? He had not done anything with anyone else. He didn’t want to. Then Sans had stopped, and he wanted nothing more than to finish what they’d started. 

He’d admit there was species-bias. Monsters sought out monsters that looked like them, so they’d have children that looked like them and operated like them, so they could pass along their knowledge. He knew there was a component of species-centrism that was commonly accepted as explanation enough for choice of pair-bonding. Still, just for the mental exercise, he’d examined his friends and peers intently. Undyne and Alphys had transcended species-centrism. They clearly had romantic love for each other, even if it went unacknowledged. Dog Marriage…. reaffirmed species-centrism. So did the rabbit community. So did the Dreemurs. But still. Just for the exercise, he tried to imagine himself with feelings for each of them. Impossible. He’d known without having to think about it that he hadn’t wanted anyone that way. Sans had now made himself into an exception to the rules. He now experienced physical desire in the context of Sans; species-centrism relative to Sans; repulsion to even the idea of sex with anyone except Sans. One— one stupid, imbecilic— oh, it would be so easy to blame him, but no, he was the fool who thought only of lending a helping hand, spending the whole night with Sans, making sure he never felt a hurt like that again, with that sadness that crushed the chest and hollowed the eyes. And his whole way of thinking, his bodily reactions, altered because of that fondness and familiarity. Feh!

And yet Papyrus couldn’t even blame Sans for it. Romantic love was a cautious rose blooming in his meticulously tended garden, swelling out and surpassing friendship and duty. Romantic love was the bird chirping loud as could be within his ribcage. Romantic love was this stupid swelling feeling in his chest that was one part new insight and one part new offspring. His new-formed, irrational heart was willing to accept far more than his brain. Surely, he thought, almost scandalized by it, there should be something in place to prevent this! Sans was unkempt and unmotivated and lazy and sluggish and slovenly and took nothing seriously— Ah, then his heart chimed in, ‘but he eats your spaghetti!’ And already his standards met and fulfilled! He could scream! No. Now he was already rationalizing the many ways he could love Sans, because he loved nothing more than justification for these petty irrational things he was going to fall prey to. He loved a work in progress. He loved knowing something that Sans didn’t, and teaching it to him. He loved the differences that allowed them to keep equal footing with each other. He loved feeling tall and important. He loved taking care of something and knowing he was needed. He loved the way Sans ate his spaghetti, some nights taking his time with it, some nights wolfing it down so fast he almost couldn’t taste it. And he loved how Sans never repeated a joke. And he loved what a good parental figure Sans had been, when he’d needed to be, and what a good father Sans would be for—

No, he needed to cut this growth off before it overtook him. (‘Too late,’ his heart chimed.) He was not going to be killed by good intentions. Where would these new impulses take him? Only unto perdition. If he could not have this, then would he be tormented? If he acted on those impulses, wouldn’t it spiral them into something awful? Sans didn’t even know what he’d done. Now he thought about conscious kissing, smooth blue tongue exploring the roof of his mouth and tangling with his own. Now he thought about swooping in and kissing him on the head while he did the vacuuming. Now he thought about trapping Sans in a cage of his limbs. Now he thought about the jelly-soft feeling of a soul between his fingertips, juices running down his arm, the mess more of an attractant than that crawling sensation of discomfort. Thoughts alone were torment enough: he ruminated on the sin, its impossibility and denial consumed him. If he acted, he would fan the flames.

This wasn’t fair to the child, and he could think about it later, once separated. Conceived from shame and born from fear and anxiety and self-loathing? What life could that be? His feelings were coming through unfiltered in their magical bond. He had a responsibility to this spark to give it the best life he could. Dawn was fast approaching, a nebulous period of time where the night-flowers dimmed and the glow worms that clung to the cave-ceiling would begin to rouse and feed. Papyrus was on a deadline.

With each little offering of magic he gave it, pushing his strength and energy toward the purplish spark, it grew a little more in turn. It had started the size of a copper penny, stronger blue than anything else. Now, it was almost the size of one of Sans’s little fists, almost the size of his own soul. He was not certain what would happen from there. A disadvantage of being a member of an ‘endangered species’, to be sure.

This was ill-planned and rash. He felt horrible. He couldn’t stop himself, now that he’d set out to do this, and he was just brash enough to attempt it, but there was probably a reason why monsters didn’t have children over the course of a week or two instead of the months of gestation. His logic warred with itself: he had the abundant strength and energy to funnel into the spark; he had never felt so weak before in his life; this was something necessary; this foreign soul felt vampiric, felt like it was devouring his life essence beyond what he cared to give, would take over the feeding and consume everything…

He shook himself out of that mindset again and grit his teeth. Just because he wasn’t used to expending this much energy didn’t mean that he couldn’t. He was being lazy, he hissed to himself, and that was incentive enough to buckle down and follow through. If there was one thing Sans could define him by, relative to the situation, it was stubborn. Yes, he had other attractive qualities that made him a wonderful partner: he was a good conversationalist, and interesting and talented at whatever he set his hands to, and also a good chef, and a kind and generous and chivalrous knight, and a cunning puzzle-master with a mind like a steel trap, all traits he hoped the little thing would inherit from him, but what _mattered_ in this instance was his indomitable will. 

The spark was a guest. It needed to be welcomed properly. It needed to be told how wonderful its parents were. Sans was gentle. He had the soul of a teacher. He was beloved by everyone. Everywhere he went, he made friends and impressions and horrible, horrible jokes. Jokes that sometimes made him laugh. And sometimes, he wanted to impress Sans with jokes like that. ‘Jokes? Jokes are funny things… they make your heart hurt less, they make you lift your spirits and feel lighter than the objective weight of your bones….’ Already, already it seemed to calm the little thing, and he pressed on ahead, knowing that the love forged here was already twisting him up again. Baby bonds. Parasitic attachments. Designed to make the parents continue to nurture them outside the, uh…. confines of the body. Oh, how he loved this thing already, wit and shame and panic aside. One part Sans and one part him; how could he not?

He lied to the spark about the circumstances of its conception, mutual love and understanding and the kind of togetherness that they would never have to be alone again, the kind of togetherness that wanted to take the best qualities of each other and turn them into something new and wonderful and representative of their love. And the lies would change as they needed. Right now, this lie was that the child was wanted and planned. They had been so lonely for so long, so sad. They had turned to each other with so many gentle kisses and hushed words, and it was a romance that always was. It was a romance of fairy tales. Sans’s beautiful eyes, tired, yes, but nurturing. Sans’s beautiful smile, wide and teethy. What else was good about Sans? What else? It was likely not appropriate to tell the spark about his newfound admiration for the more sensual aspects of Sans’s figure (slouched curvature of spinal column, wide wings of his hips, the light and shadow coming from that ill-defended ribcage, that tongue, those fingers, the rasp of his hips into—). Fairy tales and romances. Mutual passions from longing looks on afar to the tender slip of hand against hand in the most mundane of activities. There would be a loving home for this child, representative of everything good between them, remnant of a once-noble race—

Papyrus could feel an alien presence prodding at him, sorting through his memories. He wasn’t certain if the thing was suspicious of his claims and looking for proof, or if the notion of this love delighted it so. He didn’t appreciate the intrusion. Everything it touched seemed to tint the same lovestruck rosy hue. He questioned if he had always loved Sans, the caterpillar developing into the butterfly, illicit love hidden in one-note brotherly love. Not that there was ever anything wrong with the bond between brothers, not that his love had been insufficient when it was singular and innocent, but that this…. _this_ … had been lurking there all along. How many caterpillars didn’t become butterflies? Squished ones… but what else? Did moths count? Did caterpillars have a choice to become butterflies or moths or just… never become anything at all? Could a caterpillar be content to be a caterpillar, or was the very idea of flight and freedom an intoxicant, a goal, its purpose fulfilled?

Throwing snowballs at each other. Making snow-skeletons. Red paint, or was it ketchup, or cherry sauce, or an impish tube of lipstick— what had it been back then? The block letters ’S-A-N-S’ in the lump. When they were younger, Sans would make snow-figures of him, and he would make lumps and declare them to be Sans. Had it been the sadness, or had it been nostalgia, or reference, or joke, this last time? He didn’t know! He was never good at this! Anyone else, anything else but himself. How was he supposed to shape these squiggly feelings into some kind of order? How as he supposed to bear it if every memory in retrograde became something loving and useless? Blanket fort in a bad blizzard, marshmallows and tooth-picks, making skeletons again. Making s’mores. Falling asleep on each other while the candles guttered in mason jars. Had he loved him then? Years of costumes: a pirate outfit with a crisp red bandana and tattered pants; a space-man costume that was a painter’s coverall dyed radioactive orange, embroidered patches, a fishbowl; his super-hero outfit that was little more than a cape tied on, and then somehow he believed he could fly. There was a time when Sans had dressed up with him too. He had forgotten. Out there, willing to look ridiculous on his behalf. Those outfits Sans had were always just— horrible. Black slacks and black shirt and hundreds of blobs of that puffy glow paint in pink and orange and that greenish yellowish colour, and Sans would say he was ‘space’ to Papyrus’s space-man, and people would laugh, and they’d talk with Sans about a hundred different things while he sat himself in some corner with candy and punch and food and watched everyone and felt annoyed at— But now he missed it, now, suddenly, ridiculously, he wanted Sans to dress up in paired costumes with him, and how he’d laud those costumes, snicker along with the rest of them, but he’d be a part of the joke, not laughing at Sans, not like he thought they were. ‘Space’ hadn’t matched with anyone else at the costume parties; Sans’s outfits only made sense with Papyrus by his side. He wanted that again. Was this the spark’s fault that he was thinking about this in new ways? He didn’t know. It seemed to have withdrawn.

He had been in charge of what he’d fed it, but the spark had led him off on a merry little reverie, a path of destruction that was aimless and portentous. By the time he’d come back from those memories, it didn’t hurt at all. The glow was almost half as large as his own. It has separated cleanly, painlessly. There was only a little white mark where it had budded off. It hung there suspended in his chest like a moon orbiting his soul, drenched in his light. What a lovely colour it had become. Sort of a pinkish purple, an orchid tone. Mettaton’s soul colour was probably the closest match he’d seen to this, and that was a clearly manufactured and artificial tone. There wasn’t really pink magic. He imagined this child would probably be a charmer. Bright, and perky, and positive. The anti-Sans. Good with their words.

Papyrus tried to sit up to check the time. That was a mistake. His head throbbed from the exertion, and he edged back down as carefully as he could, his limbs trembling. Everything had gone to the voracious, hungry soul in agony and glut. Four. It was just turning four. He let his eyes close for a moment, sternly telling himself that he couldn’t sleep very long on the job, another voice self-satisfied that he’d actually brought the little soul this far in one go. His dream was characterized by green and blue, a lush and sensation-rich surrounding that he identified as Waterfall, soft moss cushioning his body, soft wind rustling through a weeping willow’s branches, green petals shaped like little bugs and little half-moons fluttering down and tucking into the folds of his scarf, soft fingers stroking against his forehead. Distantly, the noise of water trickling against rocks, ever down. Distantly, the giggling of a child. The pattering of feet approaching him. A body nestling against his ribs. Little hands grabbing at his chest. He could not look down. He could not look up. He felt awash in love and security.

He woke again. The tranquility of this dream vanished. He wasn’t used to them being so vivid, the rest so peaceful. Almost five. He’d wasted time that he didn’t have. There was a heavy indent in the mattress beside him, and he squinted at it. The spark, the soul, was making itself a body. The general shape of it had been hashed out, and in concentrated purple glow, the details were emerging— all the little joints, all the little fingers and toes, the hollows where ribs would be defined, the little ridges of the spine. Free will was an illusion, because as soon as he knew that spark, that vague blob of life, to look like this, he couldn’t help but love it. As soon as Sans had touched him, he couldn’t help but love him. As soon as this child had manifested, he couldn’t help but throw over his life for it. These were just how things were; he lived in service to their whims. Tiredly, Papyrus curled in, craning closer to watch the child develop. So powerful. So strong. It did this for itself. He didn’t dare touch it, didn’t dare speak, but he wanted to encourage it: go, little thing! grow big!

And then without warning the glow receded so slowly into the ribcage, and it was a baby, with dull ivory bone, its head so very large, its arms and legs so very small. It had a rounded jawline and big, ridiculous eyes, and soft, chubby cheeks, but it had his cheek hollows. The whole shape of it was at once completely alien and completely perfect. He had to stop calling the baby ‘it’. They were clearly a ‘them’ now, a being with unfocused eyes fixating on him— now his encouragement was to stay quiet, and the baby did. They just lay there on the bed, unable to lift their too-large head, their little useless limbs tucked up close to their torso. They were completely helpless without him.

He…. had no idea how to pick up a baby. He all but flopped out of bed and crawled over to the computer, seeking out even this most simple of tasks: how to hold a baby, how to wrap a baby up to keep them warm, what to feed a baby, how to feed a baby, how to know what a baby might need, what babies’ needs even were. Papyrus was exhausted. His magic had been depleted. He was physically spent from sexual intimacy and forcing magic through disused channels, with little sleep to build himself back up. His emotions were twisted up in knots, and just looking at the child that had been conceived and built in the safety of his chest only turned the screw tighter. His heart hurt, and he didn’t know if it was any of the aforementioned reasons, or the reminder that there would be a painful denial to follow. And the baby didn’t have formula, or clothing, or a place to sleep. And Sans— No. He’d have to do this too. He could make it easier. It would be easier to explain if he just— if he had everything prepared by the time Sans woke up. That’s how he was able to keep that puppy. Just sort out some doggie dishes and a little bed of straw and some chain and a leash. Even if it was a little escape artist, even if it stole bones and laundry. Just make it so that Sans couldn’t find objections.

Papyrus hesitated to touch the small thing. It made him aware of his own physical strength in horrible new ways: with one hand alone, he could crush the life out of this child he’d watched come into existence. Just the slightest slip-up, and he wouldn’t even be able to apologise or try again. He hated this. His confidence was gone. Sans’s weakness had made him feel strong. This child’s weakness made him feel like a fuck-up waiting to happen. There had to be something he was missing out on, because no one else was searching the internet furiously to figure out how to not kill their children. And this one had such trusting eyes. He loved them. He loved them so much. He could do this. Probably.

One makeshift swaddle and the biggest bundle of nerves later, he had the child tucked up against him in a warm winter coat, and he was tiptoeing out into the dark pre-dawn to ‘Nite Owl and Early Bird’, the supermarket he dropped by every morning for a bagel and a juice after his first jog around the town. The yellowish lighting and low jazzy music lulled him into a comfortable fugue; he stared at the labels and bottles and tubs on the walls uncomprehendingly, his focus gone. The night manager, keys and purse in hand, stopped by to see if he needed any help, and all but did his shopping for him. He didn’t want to separate from the baby; she pulled out the plastic bins of baby formula and the package of cloth reusable diapers for magic seepage. ‘Early Bird’, the manager he knew more often from his jogs, was considerably more talkative on the subject. Her face twisted up so strangely when he fed her the lie about the stork. He hadn’t practiced that lie at all, not even on the baby. Her lips were still in something like an ’s’ shape, and he expected there would be rumors starting soon, so he doubled down on the stork line and made himself look as innocent and deluded as possible. 

The people here were… friendly. And that meant prying into matters that didn’t concern them, and making talk about subjects that didn’t involve them, and he felt a flash of irritation through his fatigue that his personal life would be another conversation piece, as if he hadn’t shared pictures of the Dogi’s new litter on the Undernet and sent along fond regards only a few weeks ago. Ah. He might be able to get advice on child-rearing from them. Twenty. Unmarried. A baby. 

To her credit, when funds came a little short, ‘Early Bird’ managed to invent a coupon that made it all even out, while his cheeks burned and the baby made soft noises. He had her write out a note with her neat, shopkeeper block letters, ostensibly an IOU. That was tucked up into his coat pocket along with his emptied wallet. That was a discussion to be had another time: babies were expensive. Children were possibly even more expensive than babies. He tried to seem very casual about his inquiries: how to feed a baby? what exactly needed to happen for this powder to become baby formula? how badly could he mess up baby formula? Sympathy returned with remarks to his tired face and his beautiful new child— oh, how quickly he corrected her, how quickly he betrayed himself for Sans— and the information was so stealthily obtained that he felt he had gotten away with something tremendous.

The streetlights had just started to flicker into day-mode when he’d gone in; it was much brighter out as he left. He gathered up the bags in his arms and tucked the child close against his chest, where already they had begun to sleep. The return home felt like something in a dream-state. He trudged through the thick new snow. Everything felt heavy, and his mind felt light, and consequences felt like shackles, and reality felt like new preened feathers drifting down upon him from on high, and he knew so little, and he felt so much, and it felt so distant, and that little soul felt so warm and near. Maybe this was what dying felt like, only he could not die, because he no longer belonged to himself, and he had responsibilities. Maybe this was what being drunk felt like, completely sleep-deprived, out of his mind with the fatigue. He wouldn’t know. He had to sit down twice. He closed his eyes once, the world feeling like it was spinning around him. When he opened them again, it was even lighter out, and that was bad.

Papyrus fumbled with his keys and made his way into the house. He hadn’t glanced at Sans when he’d left. It had been a stealth-mission, and he was terrified that Sans would be awakened before he could make his excuses. Now it was… god, nine, ten already? How slowly had he walked? How long had he been in that store? How long had he been asleep? The packages went down with big, tired thumps. He flicked on the lights. Sans was already rousing from the noise, but he just wanted to get this over with. Even hung over, Sans was perceptive enough to catch the contents of the bag and the child clutched to his chest, the motions almost comically exaggerated as his head swung from floor to the little purple lump. 

Here was the person he had to lie to the most. He couldn’t do it looking at him. He drew out the baby and the slip of paper and handed this most precious thing off to someone who was barely keeping himself upright, but who poured every ounce of concentration into keeping the child safe. Only with his back turned, a pot of water filled and heating up a bottle of formula did he feel safe enough to start in. “I—“

“papyrus—“

No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all. He turned to look at Sans, and the expression in those eyes was devastating. This was a hint of exactly how wrong it could and would go if he was not an accomplished lie-weaver, if he did not do this properly. “Even in your sleep, you screw things up! Good thing the Great Papyrus does not sleep! That stork pecked at your window for twenty minutes before it came over to see me!”

“the stork.” Those eyes said bullshit, and they were drilling into him. He kept his face even, expression annoyed. He didn’t have to fake that.

“Yes! The stork! It is a big bird, with very long legs, and a very long beak! We have seen them before in Waterfall! This one had that— and the note with your name on it! But you were sleeping downstairs, you lazy fool! You tell me how exactly the stork is supposed to find you here!”

“but there’s…” He could almost hear gears in Sans’s head chugging along. What a thing to be woken up to. There’s no such thing as the stork. There’s no such thing as Santa. There’s no such thing as overnighting a baby. “…. what are you doing, paps?”

He gesticulated at the bottle and the pan, as if it weren’t already self-evident. “What does it look like? The stork did not provide me with a meal ready for consumption. And the child will definitely soon be hungry! And no one goes hungry in this household! Not even tiny interlopers!”

“the stork.” Sans repeated bluntly, his own fatigue cutting through to the worst of the lies. He’d have to make this stick. Somehow. “so you— you woke up with this kid on your pillow or whatever—“

“The Great Papyrus does not sleep!”

“—and you think it’s _my_ baby?”

That was a…. a sticky point indeed. He opened his mouth, and for a moment, nothing came out. Everything in Sans’s body language said that he remembered. He hadn’t expected him to. He didn’t want him to. Love and loss and longing and lust all churned inside him. The screw turned tighter, torturously tighter. His headache pounded in his ears. “Well— there’s a note,” he managed, weakly. And then, that gave him strength. “And look! They’ve got your face! Look at those cheeks and those eyes! No one could look at that child and not see you in them.”

“yeah,” Sans croaked back. “i know.”

Damn it. “So— so as a good uncle, I have very generously gone out to take care of my new nibling’s needs while you were so ensconced in slumber on this sofa!”

Sans busied himself with looking over the baby for another minute, and his heart hurt with a thousand new feelings: some form of jealousy that Sans— even the Sans he loved so dearly!— was now holding the baby he loved so dearly too; the hope and anxiety that the baby would like Sans; the quiet dread that Sans would look at that face and see him in it too. And then the farce would be over. Then they’d both have to talk about what had happened, and Sans would…. Sans would see himself a rapist, and Judge himself by the law of the land and— 

“uncle, huh.” Sans had set his face, and his eyes were tired, and there was something defeatist, something that understood but couldn’t quite accept, and he knew exactly how Sans felt for the first time. “never figured the stork would figure out where we lived. i forgot to send out the forwarding address…. pretty sure we’re still getting junk mail from that doctor guy that lived here before we did. and i’ve been, uh, out here the whole night?”

“I tucked you in,” Papyrus clarified. “Before I went upstairs. To. Do crossword puzzles.”

They were both quiet. The lie had been brokered and accepted. This was now the new truth, and the new truth was forged from the pieces of crystal innocence that had been shattered all over that couch. The baby began making noises that Papyrus hoped was their hunger-call. He reached out and took them back from Sans’s reluctant grasp, testing out a drop of the bottle on his wrist before giving it over. The child latched on to the rubber nipple, chewing into it to coax out the milk.

“kid needs a name then…. i was thinking ga—”

“They already have one.” He’d decided on it on the walk home. Sometime in the mire of consciousness and unconsciousness, tucked close to his chest, when he was talking to them quietly and realising he could not keep calling them ‘baby’. “I called them Zapfino.”

Sans looked at him a moment with lined eyes and a flat expression before accepting this too. “works just about as well as anything else.” He sighed and drew his jacket closed, and Papyrus noted that it was with painfully exact motions to hide away the orange that had remained. It was like severing even that connection. It had to be done. Their lies were truths. What else… “welcome to the family, kiddo.”

From Papyrus’s arms, Zapfino fed quietly, and did not respond.


	2. The Meet Cute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _#3: Everything is going to be alright._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished in the seamy July heat when good monsters were splashing and playing.

You couldn’t make a baby unless both parties wanted it. That was how it worked. So for starters, Sans had to contend with the knowledge that he’d emotionally compromised his brother into wanting a baby, at least in the moment. He’d taken advantage of his baby brother, and at least the other man was kind enough to pretend it had never happened.

He didn’t know how it had happened. It should be impossible. Science demanded that it was impossible. But his brother sometimes displayed an awesome power so casually that it seemed like second nature to him. Like— like he set out to do six impossible things before breakfast, only no one bothered to tell him it couldn’t be done.

Because— because the baby was his. (Theirs.) No question about it. His eyes, Papyrus’s nose, his cheeks, and Papy’s hollows, and right now, precious little baby-fingers that clutched one of his so tightly, wrapped him around just one of those tiny things like no one told this kid his heart wasn’t big enough or strong enough to try loving anyone else. And this kid was probably the most powerful thing in the kingdom when it came to opening him up. All they did was exist, and Sans was at their mercy.

So since he’d never gotten so drunk off his ass before that he’d ever r— fucked his brother, and since Papyrus had the romance and libido of an overcooked noodle, it had to be last night. It was easier to believe the stork. Boy oh boy would he love to believe in storks. The only other implication would be that Papyrus had spent an enormous reserve of energy to rush this thing through production— and for what purpose? To make him think that it couldn’t possibly be his kid, when the first premise was that it definitely was? To make sure this baby was protected outside of direct combat? To go directly back in to work? To avoid the symptoms and the shame? Any other 20-year old would’ve been petrified at the prospect. In a situation like this, reintegration was the most likely scenario: not the right time, spark. Just quietly snuff the spark before it got too big and take that magic back into your system. No one would’ve faulted him for it. He’d be perky and lively and actively pretending that he hadn’t been physically assaulted, instead of passed out on the sofa, posture ramrod straight but head knocked back against the top of the couch, snoring loudly, throat exposed. 

Was it Papyrus’s code of ethics, that everyone else should be allowed to reintegrate, but not him? He couldn’t hurt a fly, how could he extinguish a spark? Or was it that his body took over, and this baby wasn’t wanted at all, but Papy was a noble soul who would see this through? Sans looked again at the lump of blanket and bone, suddenly worried that this was something that would always remind his brother of the worst night of his life, and that this kid would go through life withou—

And what if Papyrus hadn’t gotten pregnant? Would he be dragged out before the guard right now? If this active pretense was for the benefit of the baby, would Papyrus have defrosted just enough to name man and deed for violating bodily integrity? God, he fucked him, yeah, but he also dumped a spark on him. Papyrus had no agency here at all.

What’s the timeline look like, then? How much time did that give Papyrus to fast-track a child into existence? He hit up Grillby’s at about… 8.30, when his shift had ended. Things were lively, there was a special on sliders and purple potato fries, one of the dogi was trying a paw at a ragtime tune on the piano and fumbling it, Grillby actually looked like he might crack a smile. He didn’t go to get ‘drunk’ — not like the milk-sipping sob-story of an imp that was there every pay-day. Not sure of that guy’s name, but he thought it might be Gruyere, one of the miners who’d lost their whole clan in a cave-in, something like that. He didn’t touch any of the malts: no ginger beer, no root beer, no cream soda, no carrot tonic. He was just there to drink in that atmosphere, hope that he could drown out his sorrows in company and smiles and jokes and hold it all together until everyone left. It was just around one of their major holidays, which left him a little lower than usual; Samhain would be fast approaching and that’d be even worse, and then Dad’s birthday less than a month away, and… yeah, this was roughly around the time of year he considered dusting himself. Things didn’t really get better ’til around mid-January, long after his birthday. Which was alright, because he’d toughed himself through it all before and he knew he could do it again. Got a little worse each time, though. He didn’t know if it was good intentions or some desire for relief that led his barkeep to offer up the new stuff now of all times, some kind of ketchup brought over from across the river with a spicy pepper blended into it, and some other things. It was dark and smelled exotic and made his tongue and throat hurt, but he thought it was just wonderful, and before he knew it, Grillby had closed up shop and a warm hand rubbing into his shoulder was telling him it was time to go home to someone who really…

What time was that exactly? He expected it was at least three hours he was out there. That put an approximation of 11.30. He could come back to that when his head wasn’t pounding so badly. So 11.30, uh, he sh… no, he walked. Probably 12 then. Midnight, he was back at the house, and there was spaghetti on the table for him, but he couldn’t be bothered to feel bad about filling up on food that was actually edible, and Papyrus was sitting on the couch in a way that he wanted to say was un-Papyrus-like: taking up all the space, ankles draped over the other arm of the couch, one hooked over the other, a crossword puzzle in progress, some four-colour joke-a-minute cartoon on, not like he was one to talk. And all those thought about maybe just deciding not to wake up the next morning… they all converged into something single-minded and stupid, and his legs started going before his brain caught up, but the general thought was ‘I deserve this, I want this, he’s the only thing keeping me going, this doesn’t matter’. And, well. It did matter. A lot. He still isn’t sure where that thought came from in the first place, because the red-circled date on his calendar turned out to be nothing, and nothing ever changed, and nothing was worth dying over, but there was a whole lot worth living for, and he’d gone and fucked things up with the one thing he did live for. And his stupid id still begrudged even that. He didn’t remember how it had gone down. The last thing he remembered was the frightened look on Papyrus’s face as he probably realised that this wasn’t going to stop just because he used his words as nice as possible. And then there was a kid. So he, uh, completed the objective. Rode that one right over Papyrus’s free will and scarred the kid irreparably, and if that baby hadn’t been made—

No, see, he was making a lot of assumptions based on other cases and legal documents, when he had the unique advantage of knowing exactly how his brother operated. The truth was even colder than those guestimations. Papyrus was a proud soul with a big tender heart. Papyrus would take this attack as a massive betrayal on the very concept of family, but he wouldn’t return the favour, because family apparently meant more to him than it did to the asshole who r— forced him. Papyrus loved Sans more than Sans loved him, in his frame of mind, and it was that love, and that deep stinging pride that would never allow him to admit this to anyone. It wasn’t that Papyrus was keeping mum because he didn’t have the spine to stand up to any abuser that laid a hand on him. It was that it was his only brother, his only family, and so Papyrus let him do whatever the hell he wanted. He had the uncomfortable worry that Papyrus would go so far as to help him cover up murder, if he ran that kind of path. Besides, Papyrus had no friends to confide in. He had some higher-ups that he wanted to impress, but no one he could really talk to about these kinds of things.

Papyrus would love this kid too. This kid was family: his brother’s fire and his own offspring. Maybe if it was a stranger, and he got knocked up, he’d be less hesitant to get rid of bad memories and worse mistakes. Maybe there wouldn’t be a kid. His ‘heart wouldn’t be in it’. But again. Again, because it was Sans’s magic. Yeah, that changed everything. Papyrus’s platonic love was apparently enough justification for that big, innocent heart of his to get confused, and his devotion to concepts and ideals at the expense of everything else was apparently enough to get him to keep quiet and raise the child, and all he was asking was that Sans put some time and energy into the kid too. He didn’t get to ‘enjoy’ parenting. This was the first step in a lifetime to follow of making up for this mother of all fuck-ups. His mouth felt acidic and bitter as his brain caught up just enough to add that he couldn’t have asked for a better abuser-victim scenario: the one guy he could be certain would never rat him out; the one guy he was actually interested in. And yeah, he’d already raked himself over the coals for that little revelation, but he never thought he’d ever do something about it. What kind of sick fuck— Well, apparently, this precise kind of sick fuck.

Mutual silence was probably the best possible way to play it with an innocent party involved. Nothing wrong with two dads, or two uncles who were also dads. A whole lot of trouble if this kid found out the circumstances of their birth, as the clearly-unwanted, unplanned product of sexual assault… well. If it was him, he knew he’d be devastated. Probably not the best idea to let it on that this was the worst/best thing to ever happen to them. He could make the allusion to the Scarlet Letter in reverse: the father is named and promptly left in primary parental capacity of his ‘Pearl’, free to give this kid the best possible life under no stigma and all the advantages of an older, established parent, while the maligned one recedes into the distance and lets guilt and shame devour him and take him to an early grave. Yeah, that’s pleasant, Sans.

Geez, that left… a little less than nine hours to make a baby. If you wanted a Sans-sized baby, frail and ill-nourished, you could probably manage it in a month. Gaster put him together in six weeks, and he still turned out the way he did. Papyrus was a three-month child, fairly average by all accounts. This one would probably be a freak: maybe too short, maybe disproportioned, maybe lacking in some quality that wouldn’t manifest until the worst possible moment. Good thing they were declaring this ‘Sans’s kid’. Blame all the fuck-ups on the fuck-up. Ehhh… The kid sure was good at sleeping. As soon as the bottle was drained, they were out like a light, and Papyrus soon followed. There was a… material weight to the child, probably only three pounds, max, but a kind of substantial presence that announced them to be a genuine, living, breathing monster, the physical manifestation of the slim sliver of love that they’d shared, that he’d screwed over.

No no no no, back to the math. Back to concrete facts. He couldn’t face this. Uh. Given a general approximation of his own experiences, Sans was willing to place time to conception at ten minutes max. Papyrus walked in with baby and formula at about 9.20. He could’ve gone out and done his jog and fetched materials when he knew he was going to deliver right then and there. But— but, uh. The kid was definitely wrapped in Papyrus’s blankets, which meant they were born before Papyrus headed out. And given his brother’s fatigue, it was unlikely that he’d made a jog at all. So Papyrus left the house with the newborn baby swaddled up and good to go, and made it to the store at… C’mon Sans. Put the brains in gear. Do the detective thing that Papyrus is always good at. There’d be a receipt? Maybe in one of the bags? Yeah, right under one of the powdered formula tubs. Time of transaction was 7.45. Subtract the amount of time it would take to walk that distance—

Sans rubbed his face and sat back, then stood up, knees creaking, to fetch himself a couple aspirin for the headache he was nursing. What was he doing? Avoiding thinking about the actual emotional impact of the event, or of what it meant to have a kid. Avoiding the name Papyrus gave them: Zap-fee-noh. Three syllables, not that hard to say. He’d be shortening it to Zappy or Zaps or Zapster or Fee or Fino soon enough, which would have the added benefit of really getting Papyrus worked up. He knocked those pills back dry and shifted ‘Zap-Fi-No’ to his other hip. So this was his kid. This was his baby. This was Papyrus’s baby. This was a— well, a time investment that would probably require one of them to cut hours down to nothing, and their finances were already a little tight. They were stable with two people, slowly working up to a video game system maybe, more parts for that machine, little comforts. They weren’t poor exactly. They had enough food, and they had enough clothes, and power and heat and water and land were all free as could be, but children couldn’t be neglected. They needed baby clothes, and they grew fast and made messes like nothing. They needed specialized food, and they ate like they had an empty pit at the end of their system. They needed to be diapered for that early drip of magic when they couldn’t control themselves, and golly if they didn’t just drip like leaky faucets. He could manage the crib. He could build just about anything. It was as simple as cutting things out and putting the pieces together.

The problem with Papyrus-think was that it expected the world to be logical and work under a set of universal constants. And if anyone was to follow Papyrus-think, it ought to be Papyrus. But this was moronic. Nothing about this was logical. Nothing about this reaffirmed their status quo. He couldn’t figure out why Papyrus would have remained behind with him, much less kept the kid, unless he was thinking from an emotional, illogical framework. Even then, even then, just thinking about this kid made him feel nauseous, uncomfortable, trapped. He could perhaps work a little harder… 

Even with that receipt time, there was an unaccounted gap. Maybe he’d spoken with someone. Maybe he’d snoozed. How long? Too long. Had it been snowing that morning? 

‘Stop it— stop deflecting,’ he growled out to himself. So Papyrus had gone and fetched the things to take care of a kid, had named it, had made the decision for the two of them that they’d be parents. Or that he would be the parent. And then they’d play pretend, and things would be better, and Sans would be a good parent, in Papyrus’s eyes. Maybe he’d dimly remembered that Sans had taken care of him once like that, which, ugh, just made it worse. Just made the juxtaposition between the assumed safety and the power disparity with what he went and did with that trust and power— No, he didn’t deserve this— 

Was it even shittier that he wished he’d remembered how it had gone, at least? He could argue that it was a kind of punishment to live knowing what he’d done. That comparative ignorance was blissful against stark snapshots of his assault against his brother. But honestly, he was disappointed that he didn’t even ‘get’ to remember his ‘one shot’ at his brother. That was pretty sick. Sans knew he’d never make the same mistake again, and boy, what a lesson to get hammered into him about ever dropping his guard after that, but that twisted little part of him that made him want it in the first place sighed along about how unfair it was that he did the deed and didn’t even take something to remember it by. Like, wank material. Like he’d be good again after having just one taste. Now that he knew that he’d done it and hadn’t even gotten to ‘appreciate’ it, that little voice whined about how this definitely didn’t count, and how imagination just couldn’t do the trick. Of course, of course, the best possible material would be consensual, he was quick to add—

If the kid wasn’t there, he really would turn himself in. At least try to engage Papyrus on it. Get something out of him, get condemnation, get rage, get justice. And whether that justice resembled the slow and certain crumble of fingertips dissolving to dust, or watching the steady drip of water down a rusted pipe in long forgotten oubliettes, he’d accept that. It’d do Papyrus better than this. There really was no getting the sickness out of him, because he’d. He’d wanted, and he took. He never asked, he never got consent, he never did things the right way. Not like Papyrus would but— He understood the law! Inside and out! Kind of his job! No excuses, no exceptions, no wobbly feelings or maybes or grey areas. No was no, and no certain yes was as good as a no, and starting in on it with the fucked up mentality of no consequences and no meaning and no care about the goddamned love of his life—

He didn’t even know how babies worked. All he knew was there had to be some kind of emotional capitulation in the process, which… genuinely sucked as a Judge because emotions meant diddly squat against hard-line rules. Because for 99% of the population, aka people who weren’t Sans, they got the luxury of picking who they loved, or falling out of love, or experiencing love and desire in the moment, then dropping away when it was inconvenient. If emotions were all that mattered…. well, he’d be burning in hell right now, because that impetus outweighed Papyrus’s silence. But what if babies were the product of their time together? What if the kid was already irreparably damaged because he was filled with selfishness and self-loathing and externalized sexual violence? Could that have transmitted to the baby? Did the baby see him as some kind of abomination? He held Zapfino out at arm’s length and tried to search those little features for some sign of judgment or fear. Nothin’. Kid could snooze through the apocalypse, probably. He gave him that.

What had he gained from all of this? Jumped through the requisite hoops, gave his brain a good work-out, to establish what exactly? They had a kid now, right. A kid that Papyrus was doing everything in his power to make sure would have the best possible life despite all the shitty conditions they were born into, even if that made no sense, logical or emotional. He now had confirmation that his brother was just as dopey and illogical and emotional as everyone else, and operated in ways beyond the mortal ken; see: produced a baby and didn’t even crucify him for his role in it. And yeah, in the process, Papyrus had demonstrated a casual usage of magic that outstripped Gaster’s by a metric fuckton, completely off the scales, something else entirely. Which was terrifying enough just matched against his measly 1 HP. No, no, hang on, he put together a kid in— holy shit, probably about four or five hours. Like building a child was nothing more than one of those L*GO designs with an instruction booklet that he just frickin’ sat down and plunked out single-mindedly— And the kid was…. the kid was adorable. The kid would probably grow up to be goofy looking, given the combination of Papyrus’s chin and his cheeks alone, and he’d love that face anyway. Had all their baby-teeth in, a smudge of a nose…

As he held them, Zapfino blinked their eyes open sluggishly, and held him in their fixed gaze. If he remembered right, babies couldn’t really concentrate on anything. They tracked motion, but their eyes couldn’t focus on a person and pick up what they were looking at. Still, still, Zapfino was looking at him, and they only glanced aside a second at his waving hand before moving back to him. The baby stared at him a moment more before opening their jaw wide to yawn. Their little tongue slipped out, bright bright purple, and the corners of their mouth turned up in a cheeky grin, like they were sticking their tongue out at him, sharing a joke. And he knew damn well from giving the kid a bottle just before that babies couldn’t form tongues yet, but it seemed like their kid followed in the same habit of defying magical conventions as their father. It took his brain a second to catch up with that. His heart hammered along at double-time, because he had no logic left for this, and he had no way to explain how a misbegotten spark could overnight become a healthy child, and how a healthy child could in the space of a few hours gain their magic, not for self-defence, not for self-expression, just for… just… “kind of a freak, aren’t ya…” It slipped out before he could stop himself. The child yawned wider. The tongue didn’t go away.

He set the baby down on the couch, face up, pretty confident that the swaddling that left them looking like the biggest burrito he’d ever seen would keep them tucked in one place. He wanted some coffee to chase that aspirin and keep him, the only one who was actually awake, cogent enough to handle all this. Papyrus would need something else to eat to get magic back to appropriate levels so he wouldn’t fall all over himself in training or, uh, walking down the street. They had cereal, oatmeal, bacon and eggs. Any of those would be suitable for apology breakfast, on a range of least to most intensive work involved in preparation, and viability of the food. The milk wouldn’t go bad, but the Frooti Berries would go soggy, and Papyrus hated soggy cereal. Same with the sugar frosted corny flakes (a joke in every box!). Oatmeal could congeal into a rubbery lump the colder it got. The bacon and eggs could be good for an hour or two, but that meant dishes and work. And leaving the baby alone. And attracting the attentions of the dog. Oatmeal. Papyrus liked that. Sensible meal. Could make it in the microwave. _Four hours, holy fuck._

No sooner than the instant oatmeal had been put in the microwave and the coffee machine was starting to make wonderful tantalizing smells did he hear a dull thump from the other room. Then, after a lengthy pause, the low wail of a baby crying. Sans froze. It felt like his whole body had been dunked in ice water all at once, all chill, no tremble. He was by the couch in a flash, shortcutting without even thinking about it. Please no please no—

There was the baby-burrito on the floor, face-down, its cries muffled by their shitty shag carpeting— God, what if he had been asleep? What if their poor child suffocated to death, unheard, because of an ironic carpet choice???? (Or sheer laziness in failing to replace a carpet that was 30-40 years out of fashion in the first place?) What if the kid’s face was broken open and they were permanently disfigured for life or if they died because he was a shitty parent and left his kid alone to die in a really awful, pathetic way? What if—

Sans rolled the wriggling baby-bundle face-up, crouching over it and analyzing for anything, anything at all to validate how shitty and irresponsible he was. No, just a sobbing child with a voice that went to 11, and somehow, somehow Papyrus was managing to sleep through all of this. A relief on its own, because he didn’t want Papyrus cementing the realization that he was not only a r— a brother-abuser and a lazy good-for-nothing, but a neglectful and uncaring parent.

“c’mon, kid…” He chanced another glance to Papyrus, head still tilted back, steady breathing. “shush up already.” They were so small. He could cover their entire face with one of his hands, if he wanted to, fit them inside a grocery bag or the bowl of his pelvis for hands-free travel, this little ball of blankets and bone was new life and his life and wailing out a testament to vitality and not being ignored. “please stop crying.” But they refused. It was wrong of him to try to reason with something like that. Practically a primal force of nature, a gale-force wind, and he was using his words here.

He cradled the baby’s head in his palm. His forearm was just long enough to support down the line of their spine and limbs. He was measuring in proportion to himself, and the baby fit just perfect, another detail he couldn’t help but narrow in on in his dazed state. They were jostled about once or twice before he got the hang of holding them close up against his ribs and rocking them side-to-side in a swinging motion. “shhh. it’s okay. you can sleep. i know you can sleep. you’re good at it.” Another glance to the brother who needed his sleep, and the baby who had to sleep if anyone was gonna get sleep.

“i don’t remember a whole lot of lullabies, if you’re looking to be seranaded— not much of a singing voice and i don’t think you’re the kinda audience to appreciate the trombone…” A nervous laugh. It seemed the intensity of the cries were diminishing in light of audio stimulus, so the kid did like hearing him talk, even if no one else did. And. There was one lullaby he knew.

Little child of winter,  
Born in snowy weather.  
Like a tiny snowdrop,  
Small and white and tender—

He didn’t know where it had come from, couldn’t say when he’d picked it up, either, and there was a verse for Papyrus, something referencing the sun and the summer. Zapfino was a child of fall, or ‘au-tumn’ for the meter. Snowdin offered snow aplenty, 365 days of the year, but not exactly right for the traditional depiction of the fall. He wasn’t coming up with the best of rhymes, either: ‘blizzard’ would give him ‘lizard’ or ‘wizard’, and talking about ‘as the leaves turned’ only made him think of ‘a brother spurned’. Probably have to give a good think about it, but whoever came up with the stodgy little poem surely had to be some kind of English nutter with its fixation on the weather. Sans sang out his verse to Zapfino for now, haltingly. Good enough for now, he didn’t need a lullaby at his age anyway, so the kid could have this one.

He remembered a voice that wasn’t his own. He remembered the other verses and chorus, essentially parental pleading about the miserable little thing hushing up so at least one person in the house could get their doctor recommended allotment of sleep. This stuff seemed funnier now that he had one of his own, actually. By the time he was through Papyrus’s special verse, the baby had fallen back asleep again, a killer combination of the laziest rocking motion he could muster and the droningly repetitive ‘lululla’s that had to be some kind of magic word to nerf a kid’s consciousness.

Sans tucked the Zapfino-burrito onto Papyrus’s lap. Smarter move. His legs would act as a cage so kiddo couldn’t roll unless they decided to suddenly, without warning, display an Olympic-level prowess in full-body flips in full-body wrappings, day one. Which, you know, in that case, they’d get exactly what was coming to them for something so dumbass.

Now that the weight was out of his arms, he was aware that his whole body was shaking. It wasn’t that the kid had gotten any heavier in the few minutes he was out of sight. It was… tension, and release of tension. Shock and relief. Guilt. More relief. The gratitude that Papyrus had managed to sleep through all of that, and the anxiety that it was his fault anyway. He made fists and clenched down on them hard, rolled his shoulders up to his cheekbones, held a low note, held his breath, then slowly, slowly let it all loose. He checked himself for the tremble again, then proceeded into the kitchen to finish up breakfast.

“oatmeal, with all the toppings you like. glass of milk too.” He set it down in front of the now-wakeful Papyrus, who looked up at him warily through his slow recovery from unconsciousness. “kid slept through easy. you really dosed them good with the milk.” His stupid, stupid brain went back to the night before, to Papyrus pinned beneath him. Nope. Not going there. Sans turned swiftly, mechanically, and fled up the stairs, out of sight. Good thing, probably. The last glance he chanced toward his brother, he was biting off the start of something. Maybe it was a ‘thank you’, maybe it was his personal decision to come clean about the circumstances of the child and rescind his grace and benevolence. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t want this to be taken away too. He could keep dodging forever, and it would be okay. They could make it okay.

(It needed to be okay again.)

~

On the couch, Papyrus started in on a new row of the onesie, alternating purple and pink in thick pastel stripes. His needles were almost a blur. He knit like a machine. There were two already done on the seat beside him, a third on Zappy with an over-large hood that draped over their eyes, enough for them to nap under. 

He sat on the floor, a drop-cloth over the carpet to catch wood shavings. No reason why it had to be in here. The shed wasn’t heated, but it wouldn’t take all that long. Maybe it was for measurements. Size of baby, height from floor, width of doorways. Maybe he was just lazy. Maybe he just wanted to be around the two of them.

He glanced up to Papyrus and met eyes for a single awkward moment, he from his position below, Papyrus given visually metaphorical moral altitudes. His brother looked weary, but serene, drawing up from a deep well of strength just to stay in the same room as him, just to do all the paternal duties of taking care of this kid when he could’ve cut ties completely or not carried through. Sans wanted to look at him forever, rake his gaze over every part of him and try to dissect where adulthood had entered the frame, how his brother could look simultaneously powerful and fragile, how some minute slant in his posture could indicate grief or fatigue or contempt. His brother’s expression was open. His mouth was a canted line that was not a smile, and not a grimace, and what did that mean? His brother’s eyes were watching him the same way, and he wondered what his brother saw. Was there anything good left? Was it only the pain and injury?

In the end, Papyrus broke contact with him first. That never happened. His brother felt more shame or more scorn toward him than he was capable of toward himself. It confirmed that his brother was in no shape for a confrontation, and there would be no acknowledgement, recovery, punishment, rebuilding between them. Whatever it was they had left was fractured and frail, and they’d be moored by their communal silence on this.

He’d have to deal with it, but could he really? He deserved this, and he broke everything, and now they were all messed up and shit, and— Papyrus was important to him, Papyrus was his family and his life and everything good and clearly he loved him a lot more than he really should ever have loved, and clearly not enough because he assaulted his only brother, but he was just cowardly and apathetic enough to stew in his hot-pot of bad choices, let everything fall where it was and remain broken if Papyrus didn’t want him to fix things, move out of Papyrus’s life if that’s what he wanted, fall on his non-metaphorical sword if that would heal that damaged heart. He wanted to fix it, but he wouldn’t push past the wishes of a victim for his own wants and needs. (Again. Dammit.)

Shit, shit, he was trembling again. He just had to focus on making every action really deliberate and it wouldn’t be noticed.

“The crib looks good. Are you almost done?” Papyrus still wouldn’t look at him. He verbalized the nod for that reason. “I’m glad to hear it. It does not look nearly as shoddy as that very dangerous balcony you put up.” Observation platform. It was an observation platform for their roof, with a telescope trained on that distant hole in ceiling. “You’re doing a good job.” His brother stood, smiled thinly at him, and headed upstairs. It could be enough, for now.


End file.
